The apparently-AI artwork doesn't help. From some googling it appears to be a direct rip-off of this: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-great-amer...
https://computer.rip/2020-06-14-manifest-telephone.html
I said that religion does not thrive under capitalism, and of course this was the fate met by the Bell system. The breakup of the Bell system in 1982 occurred primarily in response to their very high rates, which were (accurately) seen as symptomatic of the monopoly they enjoyed.
CNBC Reporting Live from Jack Welch's funeral, March 5, 2020: https://youtu.be/6opKFgvRzjE?si=ynbAEYEZBCzfuTqE
Nobody is wearing masks, but there is a lot of name-dropping by the field reporter, Robert Frank, and a full obituary in the dooblydoo; don't miss them
This does have me thinking more about what causes things to look AI-generated. The uncanny valley effect. It seems like some people don't like the header image but I thought that was a nice touch to have a visual element.
What's ironic is I normally use ChatGPT but they have a bug that caused my account to be downgraded so I didn't have my "normal" AI tool today.
Maybe they can work well with proper oversight, but the status quo for the majority of defined benefit plans is to be mismanaged and underfunded. See the role (union negotiated) defined benefit plans had in the US auto industry collapse. 60 out of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit plans in the US are underfunded, more than half! Chart in that article shows that 40% being funded is actually unusually high, historical trend is 15-20% of plans meeting funding levels. https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-u-s-pension-plans-are...
Funding a defined benefit plan for lower wage workers vs paying lower wage workers more and contributing more to a defined contribution plan has exactly the same costs on the employer side. The only way the defined benefit plan appears to work out better for both parties is because we have legalized the employer not funding these plans to the appropriate level and hanging the supposed beneficiaries of the plan out to dry when it goes south.
Even ignoring the rampant underfunding issues defined benefit plans are a classic example of the principle agent problem where the interests/risk appetite of the fund manager and the fund members don't line up perfectly.
I worked for GE for a couple of years. They are a conglomerate. They acquired other companies. I worked for a company where GE was the largest customer, and GE acquired it. If a company started to perform poorly, it wouldn't be long before it would either be sold or split apart. The company I was working at probably would have failed anyway due to rapid competition, but since GE used a lot of its products it was sort of a no brainer until an alternative was found.
Acquiring and sunsetting companies is not uncommon now, but back then it wasn't received well and backlash accumulated over time. They had/have a huge part of the jet engine market. Due to their size and executive connections, they were capable of landing large contracts, such as defense and aerospace.
They aren't successful if compared to Meta for example, that nets $70 billion per year.
GE acquired the power grid component of Alstom, a French company in 2014. That company was previously fined by the US DOJ for $772 million for FCPA violations (bribes). (This was back in the US World Police days).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom#Judicial_investigations
These bailouts -- and the decisions if a pension fund should be forcibly closed -- are political in nature. For example, Biden bailing out the Teamsters pension fund (https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statement...) or the decision by congress to ignore the fact that CalPERS has continuously below the 80% recommended funding for non-governmental pensions putting a 1.7T time bomb in play.
In essence, government is failing to play one of its more essential roles of regulator.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/boeing-corporate-...
https://www.syracuse.com/living/2019/09/an-historical-timeli...
I was surprised when the article opened with what it said was the worlds first transistor radio, because I always thought that was the TR-1. It looks like GE made a prototype, but never took it to market.
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects...
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/ge-completes-three-way-sp...
Here is a positive review of that other book from Bill Gates:
30-Aug-2000 GE was $580.94 billion
It's never gotten above around half that valuation since.
Most key divisions were sold off. You can get "GE" label appliances, but it is a Chinese company. Plastics, which invented Lexan, was sold to Sabic. On and on. It is simply not the company it was and will take decades, if ever for it to become that again.
30-July-2020 = $53.13 billion
Since then, the remaining aerospace division has recovered to $257B, but it is a different business.
edit add ref link: https://companiesmarketcap.com/general-electric/marketcap/
I enjoyed flying on the Viscount. It offered a much nicer passenger experience than the current crop of sardine cans.
Decades later I got in a lot of time flying the simulator that Air Canada donated to a tech school.
http://www.vickersviscount.net/Pages_Technical/Rolls-RoyceDa...